Everybody knows the success story that has been $AAPL over the last ten years.  Not only are they the dominant player in consumers electronics, hell they practically created multiple product categories by themselves.

But back when I was growing up in the late 80′s, the conventional wisdom was that $AAPL’s ability to take market share in the personal computer business was limited.  Mac’s were thought of as “quirky” computers that were good for such non-important things as graphics, but didn’t have the power to drive the programs that were necessary for serious users.

Boy how times have changed.

This week NASA completed what was perhaps its most ambitious space mission since the end of the Apollo program, landing the rover Curiosity on the surface of Mars.  And in the control room for that mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, what type of computer was on the desks of perhaps the most geekiest geeks in the work of geekdom?

That’s right, $AAPL Macs.

Whether or not this is a “magazine cover” moment for $AAPL and it’s stock remains to be seen, but it certainly is cool to see how far they have come.

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